Escher's Mobius strip as a symbol of. the interconnected
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My own position, however, is that Heidegger is not neccesarily right. I
believe that it is possible to rearticulate science and philosophy, and I
have argued that the constructivist paradigm in cognitive science is an appropriate
tool for the task. It is worth noting here that "cognition" is both the
object of cognitive science and, since science is itself a cognitive activity,
the subject of scientific discourse. Conversely, the "observer" who
identifies living organisation as autopoïetic and who makes a distinction
between "organism" and "ecological niche" is also a cognitive
being included as a scientific object in the domain of the theory itself. In
a constructivist account of the evolution of cognition, such as that sketched
in outline here, these two aspects are related by coming full circle to the
point of departure. This figure is somewhat akin to a Moebius strip, in that
the subject and the object are locally distinct (and inseparable) like the
two faces of the strip); yet via a complete revolution, the subject becomes
the object and vice versa. This global figure of a circle or spiral has been
quite explicitly thematized by a number of authors, notably Piaget (1972),
von Forster (1974), Morin (1977) and Maturana and Varela (1987). The point
I want to make here is that as a consequence of this "circular" figure,
the non-objectivist character of the constructivist paradigm necessarily and
intrinsically applies reflexively to itself. The fact that a thorough-going
constructivism leads to a renewal of our understanding of science itself has
been well illustrated by Latour and Woolgar (1979). In other words, this
paradigm is both interpretative and self-interpretative. Classical natural
science is (implicitly or explicitly) grounded in the ontological postulate
of a unique objective reality; this postulate is however generally considered
to be meta-physical, i.e. not to be a part of science itself. This is the
reason for Heidegger's evaluation of the philosophical limitations of classical
science (physics being the prototypical example). The constructivist paradigm,
by contrast, is intrinsically hermeneutical; it is grounded not in any absolute
reference, but simply by its own coherency and viability as an interpretation.
Since no interpretation can claim principled uniqueness, this paradigm is
necessarily tolerant and pluralistic; with the interesting corollary that
constructivism does not and cannot disqualify computationalism or indeed
any other paradigm capable of manifesting its viability. The difference remains,
however, that constructivism (unlike computationalism) includes reflexion
on its own philosophical status as an integral part of scientific practice.
I therefore claim, in conclusion, that Heidegger was not necessarily right
and that science can think. To paraphrase the words of the poet T.S. Eliot:
coming upon a footprint in the sand, and recognizing it as our own, we may
know the place - and ourselves as scientists - for the first time.

One may ask whether a phenomenon like emergence (or holism) can be made
mathematically respectable. Our answer is absolutely yes! Take for example
the ways complicated `surfaces' like manifolds are being glued together from
elementary pieces. New topological and geometrical properties occur, but
may often require sophisticated "observational" functors
like cohomology theories to be detected and described. Furthermore, in a
knot where is the knottedness? It is a global property, having no meaning
locally. Or in a Moebius band - where is the twist? Same thing again! (See
Penrose 1995).

As Zizek describes it, The standard definition of parallax is: the apparent
displacement of an object (the shift of its position against a background),
caused by a change in observational position that provides a new line of
sight. The philosophical twist to be added, of course, is that the observed
difference is not simply "subjective," due to the fact that the same object
which exists "out there" is seen from two different stances, or
points of view. It is rather that, as Hegel would have put it, subject and
object are inherently 'mediated,' so that an 'epistemological' shift in the
subjects point of view always reflects an 'ontological' shift in the object
itself. Or-- to put it in Lacanese --the subject's gaze is always-already
inscribed into the perceived object itself, in the guise of its 'blind spot,'
that which is 'in the object more than the object itself,' the point from
which the object returns the gaze. (PV, 17)

Thus, before starting up this internetic knowledge, we must be aware of
the cyberspace and set up the manner we can establish something like a cognitive
path, from its frontier conditions and our proper contingencies. In this
case, it is not useless to remind the etymology of cybernetics, term coined
from the greek kybernetiké that leads to the helmsman, and to the act of
giving a path to the navigation in bad weather or lull (as well as, nowadays,
in this cyberspace called Web, we move into a mass of information, and, also,
connection losses). This explains why the reasoning that can take place in
the cyberspace arises not as a pre-established activity by well-known paths,
following a so-called Great Reason disguised of dogmas or prejudices, but as
a constant even provisional taking back of a rationality that we carry in our
bodies. In a few words, it concerns a rationality that is always in movement,
capable of establishing unexpected connections between hypothesis and deductions,
until we are no longer able to distinguish them, like a rhetoric or argumentative
Moebius curve, where interior (exterior) and anterior (posterior) become the
same thing. In the cyberspace, it is important to stress the connectivist architecture
that allows it to crystallize and be navigated, or, in other words, the feature
that allows us to start our reading in any point and always reach another one.
Nevertheless, we must argue that this connectivist architecture does not fade
the differences between the points, and, more important, that we do not become
capable of unbounded aware of all points and navigation paths. All this issues
concern the necessity of giving limits to the reason, mainly to this reason
that takes place in a cyberspace that pretends to have no limits. If its connections
are virtually endless, if there is no definitive or tangible limits in its
informational stream, there is always a limit to the human knowledge. Besides,
knowledge without limits tends to 'dis-reason' or to its counterpart,
the irrationalism. It seems easy to understand, then, why there is no place
to a god in the cyberspace.